Soup

It is messy, torn, and burnt.

I let you in, showed you the art,

You added your own stroke,

Painting carefully around the gashes.

Then, you decided you didn't like it anymore.

The art you once loved and cherished,

That you participated in making.

You slashed your paint off the canvas,

Cutting off the parts your brush touched,

Tearing my canvas once again.

You missed a few spots.

Your paint still remained-

I had to color over it,

Repair the damage you made.

The love for art

The pride in creation

A fire in our chest that claws at the heart

Begging to be let out

So it can consume the notebooks,

The paints, the piano,

To burn a stain into our own little corner

In the press of a nib to the paper.

There is an art

In the careless spots of ink that dripped on a corner.

There is a care

In the thoughts fossilized in messy handwriting

I dug a hole to plant something new.

6x3 feet, deep enough

For the roots to stretch

More and more- until they curl around a rib,

Cradle a skull,

Hold tightly onto empty hands,

Feast on what once was,

So, it stretches up into the sky.

And after the leaves fall,

Thinking of what I could've- should've

done differently

But for me to do so,

It would be me

I did not have it in me

to know- to feel-

Long hair, curves, 

The perfect girl. 

My hair is chopped below my ears,

My chest, my hips, 

All flat as a board.

I was never very feminine.

My dress chokes me, 

My soul constricted despite the flowy skirts.

The person in the mirror wears a smile.

She loves her friends, her family,

She doesn't hide away,

Doesn’t lock herself in her room nightly,

Wishing away her fears, 

Her chest,

Her body.

My skin is stained with scratches, 

Forever wishing to escape this body,

It belongs to me, but it is not mine, 

It was never meant to be. 

The person in the mirror has dreams, 

A bright past,

A bright present, 

A bright future. 

She shines, and so do her ambitions,

A perfect life laid ahead of her.

I am still in her shadow,

Too wrapped up in my head, in my body,

How can i think of the future

When I don't know if I'll make it to tomorrow?

The person in the mirror isn’t me.

But I am her.

Everything I was born to be, 

Everything I couldn't be.

I pretend to be this person.

This girl who looks back at me now. 

Born of the same body, 

Yet my soul doesn’t fit into it. 

A puzzle with one piece made wrong,

Jammed into place just to look whole.

And I do look whole. 

To my friends, 

To my family,

And to myself

Until I look in the mirror.

There is a girl in the mirror.

When I fell, it's roots cradled me, it's branches blanketed me.

And so, I was taken into it's hold, into it's foliage.

The bark is my bed, the leaves are my pillow.

For when he whispered gently, asking for my name, my body, my heart, I gave it to him.

And so, he tore apart my chest, leaving my ribs empty, yet he bound me together with ribbon and thorn, sealing me with a kiss.